Professor James Kuklinski, one of IGPA's longest-serving faculty members, has been honored with the Hazel Gaudet Erskine Political Psychology Career Achievement Award by the Political Psychology Section of the American Political Science Association. Kuklinski is a nationally known expert on politcal behavior. He has been a member of the IGPA faculty since 1983 and is a professor emeritus in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“Jim Kuklinski has made substantial contributions over several decades to multiple sub disciplines within Political Psychology, especially methodology and political behavior," the selection committee noted in its announcement. "We are all in his debt, and grateful for his many years of service to his students, his University, and the discipline at large.”

The award is named in honor of Hazel Gaudet Erskine, a prominent social scientist and early member of the Princeton Radio Project, a multiple univerisity research project that studied the effect of mass media on society in the late 1930s. Kuklinski is the second recipient of the award, which was given to Professor David O. Sears of the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2015.

"Jim has been the godfather of political psychology for 40-plus years," said IGPA Director Christopher Z. Mooney. "His work and his leadership in the field are among the most important reasons for the flowering of this field, which is now one of the most vibrant, productive, and influential in the political science discipline."

Kuklinski will receive the award at the Political Psychology Section's annual meeting in San Francisco on Sept. 1.

The Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois